Cheaper electricity? Chris Bowen promises it’s on its way to you soon...

Lower retail electricity prices are in that land of the unicorns where your $275 saving lives.

Mr Bowen recently posted on Facebook that wholesale energy prices had decreased 47 per cent in the past 12 months.

At the National Press Club today, I asked him:

…in many cases retail supply charges have increased and time of use windows have changed, making any consumer price changes minimal, and less transparent. Minister, who is actually benefiting from the halving of wholesale electricity prices?

He confidently responded with a non-answer. It will flow through to the consumer so wholesale price reductions are a good thing.

The bottom line is that lower retail electricity prices are with your $2.75 saving Labor promised in 2022.

In the Flat White newsletter, Alexandra Marshall wrote:

Climate Change and Energy Minister, Chris Bowen, has turned ‘underwhelming’ into an art. His polished media appearances, including at the National Press Club last week, allow criticism to slide off his suit jacket. Ignoring those who point out the eye-watering costs of his COP-31 moonlighting, the Energy Minister has been pushing Labor’s Net Zero policies so hard that a future Coalition government will struggle to unpick the damage. Our Canberra correspondent was at the Press Club to ask the Minister questions.

In the Morning Double Shot newsletter, Terry Barnes wrote:

Our Michael de Percy attended energy minister Chris Bowen’s ideological diatribe at the National Press Club yesterday, so you don’t have to. His report from the Press Club trenches shows how Bowen is a master of the non-answer, talking about energy consumers yet caring not about them. One can only hope the Press Club’s rubber chicken made the motorcycle trip to hear Bowen worthwhile for Michael.

My latest in The Spectator Australia, Cheaper electricity? Chris Bowen promises it’s on its way to you soon...

Energy prices are getting cheaper - didn't you hear?

Energy Minister Chris Bowen said so on his Facebook.

Today, I asked him at the National Press Club: Who is benefitting from lower wholesale electricity prices?

Not you and me...

Article | https://t.co/5MLSWaslTp pic.twitter.com/oLOBxoOS5d

— The Spectator Australia (@SpectatorOz) August 5, 2026

You need to decolonise your mind

It’s not spring, so it wasn’t spring cleaning. It was pure catharsis.

Some might say the real colonial occupation in Western liberal democracies is not the one the textbooks denounce, but the ideological one they themselves carried. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o coined the phrase in a very different context. The irony is that the phrase now travels more easily in the opposite direction.

From the late 1970s and 1980s, imported theoretical apparatuses such as postcolonial theory, applied postmodernism, and critical approaches to identity, established themselves inside Australian universities and then cascaded into teacher training, curricula, and public discourse.

Much of it arrived via French high theory in the late 1970s and 1980s. Thatcher was alert to the broader cultural and educational dangers of the time. Australian universities largely were not.

My latest in The Spectator Australia, You need to decolonise your mind.

THE WOKE COLONY OF THE MIND RADICALISES KNOWLEDGE

When the idea of colonisation is transplanted into Western liberal democracies, it demands a purge of the Enlightenment inheritance itself.

Universalism, evidence, the possibility of knowledge independent of the knower’s… pic.twitter.com/3xxCSFRABJ

— The Spectator Australia (@SpectatorOz) July 30, 2026

What did I miss? Australia's political week in fast-forward

What is his Plan B? This has nothing to do with chepaer electricity or carbon emissions. 

Those who allow Labor press releases to act as their sole source of truth wouldn’t imagine that Australians are caught in the worst cost-of-living crisis in living memory.

The economy is … buggered. And the culture wars, that don’t exist, have the major parties bound and gagged as the captives of Populism. At least, that’s what we’re led to believe by the level of hysteria.

While this is going on, the average voter is watching ISIS fighters, enthusiasts, and brides return with surprisingly few consequences.

On that topic, and with battle-hardened ISIS Grooms discovered in Iraqi jails, One Nation’s Pauline Hanson wrote to Angus Taylor offering her party’s support for any legislation put forward to keep them out.

This was triggered by Australian doctor Tareq Kamleh, known as ‘Dr Jihad’, wishing to return. An action Angus Taylor wants to block over his alleged support for ISIS.

Deputy Liberal Leader Jane Hume wasn’t particularly interested in One Nation’s offer of support, insisting that the Coalition needs the support of Labor, not One Nation. Good luck with that.

My latest in The Spectator Australia co-authored with my editor, Alexandra Marshall @ellymelly, What did I miss? Australia's political week in fast-forward.

How bad is the economy?

While Energy Minister Chris Bowen reserves $4.2 million for swanky hotel rooms in Fiji, my energy provider has stopped notifying me of bill increases.

It prefers to tell me that it's 'changed its position'. Just like Albo.

Article |… pic.twitter.com/qRmml7nLp1

— The Spectator Australia (@SpectatorOz) July 26, 2026